What legends did we miss just because they weren’t yet famous enough for us? Today, we music fans may pay hundreds, sometimes even thousands of dollars to buy a ticket to see a major arena performer. They’re expensive even if […]

Has the closing of a drugstore in a suburban strip center ever been the cause of so much grief? From the outside, it looked like nothing special. Sometime in the 1980s, the 1956 shopping center underwent a modernizing facelift, as […]

A nice bowl of goldfish, nogless eggnog, the frantic scramble, a celebrated female impersonator, a live theatrical dramatization of an aeroplane crashing through a Mexican house—and a momentous meeting at the top of the Burwell It was Christmas season again. […]

Because, for decades he always seemed to be the same age, perhaps 43, lanky, energetic, youthful Bruce Wheeler never seemed likely to leave us any time soon, but we regret that he has. He was really 84, and this past […]

THE MYSTERIES OF A KNOXVILLE THANKSGIVING It’s supposedly a simple holiday, dating back to 1621, and the Pilgrims, who sought simplicity. But most sources claim that despite Tennessee’s plenitude of wild turkeys and pumpkins for pie, we didn’t celebrate the […]

OPERA’S DEBUT IN KNOXVILLE Both locals and newcomers tend to jump to the same conclusion: that Knoxville, whose founders were surely country-music or gospel fans if they knew anything about music at all, decided at some point—in recent years, of […]

A recent article in the News-Sentinel about Vol “Traditions” made me realize that my old alma mater’s traditions are constantly changing, and some are rather new. Most of those traditions listed were not things I knew about when I was at that […]

THE ROLE A COMPLEX CITY PLAYED IN A DIRECTOR’S CAREER Knoxville’s primary contribution to the creation of Hollywood’s film industry has gotten more attention recently with the publication of a thick and well-received biography by Irish scholar Gwenda Young, called Hollywood’s […]

WHAT REALLY HAPPENED HERE IN THE SUMMER OF 1937? It’s July, and it’s hot. Don’t you wish there were a place nearby where you could buy some cold beer and then take your clothes off and dance in the woods? […]